


Is this how it feels (if it is, Mal understands why her mother cursed Aurora)

by DefinitelyNotStraight



Series: We Know Our Names, We Are Free [1]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Abuse, Curses, Djinni & Genies, Evie & Jay & Mal & Carlos de Vil as Found Family, Fae Mal (Disney), Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magic, Starvation, Witch Evie (Disney)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26897881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefinitelyNotStraight/pseuds/DefinitelyNotStraight
Summary: Evie and Mal through the years. Meeting, becoming friends, becoming family. Evie spills the abuse of her mother to the fae child, and the Evil Queen gets what's coming to her.
Relationships: Evie & Evil Queen (Disney), Evie & Jay & Mal & Carlos de Vil, Mal & Maleficent (Disney)
Series: We Know Our Names, We Are Free [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962541
Comments: 1
Kudos: 135
Collections: Witchy and Monstrous AUs





	Is this how it feels (if it is, Mal understands why her mother cursed Aurora)

**Author's Note:**

> Literally angst and sad. Friendship and found family too.   
> Idk I love the films and watched them again so here is this piece of hot garbage.   
> Enjoy!

Evie and Mal first met when they are kids, barely four years old. Their mothers shove them into a seperate room and threaten them to be quiet, and they have tea and discuss strategies that will not work in the end while the girls figure out what the Hell they are supposed to do with someone their own age.  
They do not start school until they are six years old, and their mothers like to keep them firmly under their thumbs in a grip so tight it hurts.   
Evie knows a little about Mal from what her mother told her on the way - the girl is the daughter of Maleficent, she is half fae, and half something else that she got a slap from her mother for asking about. Her face still aches from it, and she prays that it won't bruise because she is already imperfect enough to her mother, and bruises will only lead to her being scorned upon more.  
She also knows that Mal is not her name, that names have power and that everyone in the Isle is at least part Fae. Names are tools, her mother says, and that she is to tell her real name to absolutely no one. Not unless she trusts them, and she must never trust anyone.  
"Call me Mal." The girl with bright purple hair and green cat eyes tells her, and Evie nods.   
"Then I shall be Evie."   
Their words are quiet, but it feels loud and heavy in the small room they are trapped in for the time being.   
Mal pulls out a sketchbook and pencils and she begins to draw, and Evie isn't as offended by the silence as she thinks others would be. Neither if them have many words, even less that they have been allowed to say, silence feels safer to them both. Evie pulls out some thread and a needle, and begins to stitch into her sleeves, and she tries to ignore the glance that Mal casts to her bruised up wrists, her mother's fingers imprinted in greens and yellows into her skin.   
Evie, small and still a toddler, tries to remember what she read in her grandmother's grimoire about sigils.   
Specific phrases, eliminate the vowels as they clutter the spell, remove the repeated letters and then rearrange whatever is left until it feels right. It takes a few tries, her grandmother had written, and it takes time, but the baby witch always gets it.   
Evie had been trying in secret, her mother says she is much too stupid to learn the spells of her family, but Evie disagreed. She didn't know much, but she knew she was not stupid. She hadn't managed a working sigil yet, but she would keep trying.   
She didn't know what to ask the Goddess that her grandmother had mentioned for.   
Her eyes cast over the small room, Mal's room she thinks. It's bare and tiny, barely bigger than a closet, but her eyes catch on the sketchbook in Mal's arms. It's obviously precious to the fae girl, she held it with care, and her pencil strokes were gentle. It was also scorched, tinged black from flame that Evie just somehow knew was from Maleficent.   
"Can I have some paper, and a pencil?" She asks, on a whim, fully expecting to be hit by the girl, but smiles a small smile that would have her mother yelling about wrinkles when it is given to her. 

IT SHALL BE PROTECTED.   
Statement.   
T SHLL B PRTCTD  
Cross out the vowels.   
TSHLBPRCD  
Remove all the repeat letters.   
LTBHDPRSC  
Rearrange until they feel right, then combine them until they make your fingers spark.   
That's what her grandmother had written, and Evie carefully spent ten minutes mixing the letters into intricate symbols until one make her fingers spark blue and crackle.   
Mal watched her, her emotions masked but green cat eyes curious.   
She had done it, Evie wanted to yell and scream with glee, but obviously she didn't. Her mother would kill her, for disobeying, for yelling. Maleficent might kill her too.   
"Can I have your sketchbook?" She asked and she flinched back at the luminous tinge that Mal's eyes took. Bright green, but if she looked closely, there was just the slightest ring of furious blue around her pupil. It was beautiful and terrifying, and Evie wondered again who was the fae girl's father.   
A tense few moments, Mal sizing her up and Evie staying still and allowing the bigger girl to look into her as if staring at her soul.   
The book was handed to her, and Evie ran her hands over smooth leather, before reaching for her needle and thread.   
Mal moved closer, sat beside her and watched her stitch the leather with navy blue thread the exact same shade as the witch girl's hair. She looked at the sigil, and the original statement, and her eyes widened.  
Evie was doing something nice for her, but why? What was the catch? What would she owe?  
She watched small fingers stab themselves with a needle a few times as Evie stitched the pretty sigil she had made into the leather, fingers glowing faintly royal blue as she stitched, until a flash flowed through them both and it was done.  
Evie looked dazed, and Mal looked impressed at the girl.   
"Was that your first spell?" She asked, and Evie nodded.  
"Don't tell mother. She will be so mad, I'm too stupid to be learning things like this but it was calling out to me." She begs the fae, and Mal lets her lips curl at the fear running through the smaller girl. A flash of unfamiliar emotion that she identified as protectiveness flashed through her. She did not like the Evil Queen before, thought the woman too vain and self absorbed, but the much too skinny frame of her daughter with bruised wrists and panicked eyes made the dislike sour to hate.   
She was a baby faerie, she knew, and she had not found her powers yet, but she would find a way to make Evil Queen regret what she has done to her daughter.  
"I won't say anything." She says, and she means it as a promise, a dangerous thing for fae but she watches the panic leave the small bluenette before her and decides the slight vulnerability worth it. 

It was quiet after that, and Mal stuffed the sheet of paper that Evie had used to do her sigil work on under the floorboards to burn afterwards. Silence was safe, and it was comfortable, and warmer than before. Mal's sketchbook felt heavier, warmer, and she had no doubt that the tiny witch's spell had worked.   
They parted ways later, with a distant nod of the head each that their mother's snickered at, but with an understanding in place.   
\---------------------  
The next time they met, they were six years old, heading to school. Their mothers told them to walk together, and the girls nodded their acceptance, not allowing themselves to show how eager they were to meet again.   
Their mothers did adore tearing things they liked from them, and Mal refused to lose Evie to her fiery inferno of a mother.   
They walked side by side, not quite brushing sleeves, deemed old enough by their mothers to be shoved from their homes alone, to school and do their mother's biddings.   
And to terrorise and be evil, Maleficent had drilled into her child, which is why Mal shoved a smaller boy into a set of bins and the girls laughed as he spat out garbage. This is what they were taught to do.   
They were allowed to be friends, and their mothers were closer than before, not long after. So it wasn't uncommon for Evie and Mal to be shoved into Mal's bedroom while their mothers talked, and eventually, they talked themselves.   
Mal allowed the girl the scraps of leather she wasn't using when Evie mourned that her mother had slapped her for asking for some. The girl make the leather into intricate bracelet cuffs, with more sigils within them. Two for each of them, and Mal was confused again as to why Evie had done such a thing for her. But this time, she asks.   
"You're my friend. We're going to run this Isle someday, our mothers say so. You need to be protected until then." Evie said simply, and Mal found another level of respect for the girl who was still much too small for their age.   
The bracelets work, and she wraps one around her knuckles in the playground when Uma tries to take her food. Uma is flung into the pond like the little shrimp she is, and the purple haired fae and the blue haired witch are the queens of the playground.   
That day is the beginning of the rest of their lives, fated to occur, but they did not know that, small as they were.   
\---------------  
Mal's fae magic kicks in early, and when it does, it kicks in for Evie.  
Most fae get their powers when they are nine years old or older. Half-fae or other hybrids get their magic from anywhere from nine to fifteen.   
Mal gets hers at eight years old, early and clearly powerful even while being only half fae, and Maleficent is so greedily pleased about it.  
Not proud. Never proud. Pleased for how it can benefit her.   
But not surprised, which she should be. It is on that day that Mal finds out who her father is.  
They're eight now, and have made friends tentatively with Carlos De Ville and Jay Jafar. They have a way to go, but they are a gang and they are family and while the four of them arent as close as Mal and Evie obviously are, they know that they will be.   
Jay is half djinn, and Carlos has both fae and witch blood in him, and the hybrid children fit together like a puzzle that no one should try to make.   
Even as small children, they are growing in reputation. Jay is good at stealing and fighting, and his teachings have made Carlos smart and scrappy too.   
They agreed to meet in the abandoned attic that Mal has slowly been turning into a home for them. The security system is still in progress, and they aren't safe yet from older kids trying to mess with them, but this spot is still safer than their homes.   
Evie is late, really late.   
Evie is never late, ever, she's always the first there.  
"Should we go look for her?" Carlos asked, and Mal frowned. It was fifteen minutes after they should have met. What if someone had cornered Evie on the way there? Evie was the weakest of them physically, and the prettiest. Alot of people would love to hurt her here.   
"Okay." She agreed, and off the kids went.  
It didn't take them long to find Evie. They started at the Evil Queen's manor, and expanded outwards into the alleys that made up most of the Isle.  
It wasnt hard to find the bundle of blue in amongst grey and black.   
"Evie." Mal gasped as Jay lifted the girl up, and she feared the girl was dead for how pale and gaunt she was.   
It had been a week since any of them had seen her, and how apparent it was that the week had been on of Evie's worst.  
Jay looked like he might hurt someone and Carlos looked sick. Mal was just seething because the fae in her was boiling in the knowledge that someone had hurt Evie. Her Evie, the girl who had been kind to her and taught herself magic and was kind and cruel all at once and was Mal's best friend.   
"Bring her to the attic." She ordered Jay, and together they moved to their secondary home, stopped occasionally by those worried for the girl.  
Not everyone was horrible, though it seemed that way sometimes, and Evie was a well known girl. She shopped for her mother's ingredients and often did little sewing jobs for people. Evie was popular, and people liked her.   
"Looks like starvation." Ginger Gothel said gravely, and she shoved a container of soup and bread for all four of them into Carlos' arms. She showed them away with orders to heat it up and to keep Evie warm.   
Mal felt cold and burning all over. Starvation was right, she knew. She had been told by Evie how her mother starved her often to make sure she would never be too attached to food and become fat. How as a punishment the woman would lock her away in a closet and would leave food outside the locked door for the smell to torture the starving girl even more than the hunger itself did.  
Something was burning in her, it hurt like fire but felt right boiling in her blood, and her eyes stung. Everything seemed to have a poisonous green halo and her hands itched to claw at flesh and her tongue flicked across her pointed teeth with the desire to spit out words in a language she wasn't aware that she knew.  
"...Mal?" Carlos sounded afraid, and she hissed a little with pleasure. Good, he should be afraid.   
The other part of her mind didn't want Carlos to be afraid, the part of her that looked at Carlos and saw the little sibling she had never had.   
"Go without me." She orders and she watches with green tinged gaze as she is obeyed, but Jay kisses her forehead before he does and whispers in the language of the djinn a blessing for protection and power.   
She basks in the warmth of someone her magic knows is safe, the unfamiliar but truly beautiful feeling of lips against her skin.   
She spins on her heel and she hunts.   
It is a Friday, and Evil Queen always goes to her mothers' on those days. Now they are older, they are allowed to be banished outside for those meetings rather than tossed into Mal's bedroom, and she makes her way there.   
She doesn't notice how the streets part for her like Moses with the sea, how the older kids cower when they see eyes that glow brighter than fire and teeth that were so white and sharp that her own lips were bleeding. She doesn't notice the gazes upon her ears, which have gone even pointer than before, and the slight green tint to her skin.   
Her home (if you can call it that is in reach) and she falters as age-old fear of her mother makes itself known.   
Can she do this? Incur the wrath of her mother that she knows will be both painful and drawn out?

She remembers how shallow Evie's pulse was, how thin she is, how Jay lifted her like she was nothing. She remembers bruised palms and wrists and offering to split snacks with her friend and the idea of food being met with sheer terror.  
She does not care what her mother does. Evie is hers, her best friend, her sister. Her witch. Her magic called out for its sister, the girl who helped her and smiled so sweetly and stitched blessings into clothes of those she cared for. The girl who had been stealing knowledge from her mother since she was a toddler and the fae half of Mal was furious because Evie would never be hurt this way again.  
Evie might not survive. And with that dark thought, she stormed into her house, green tendrils of fae fury around her and glowing green and blue eyes.  
Her mother and the Evil Queen stopped their discussion and stared, and Maleficent gave a beam that Mal would have adored to be levelled at her any other day.   
She did not care for any affection from her mother on this day. Because Evie might die and someone needs to hurt for that.  
Is this what her mother had felt as she cursed Aurora? Because she finally understands the need to make someone hurt.   
"Oh, so they have kick in. That is wonderful." Maleficent states, but green eyes stare into the Evil Queen and the woman pales.   
She isn't pale enough, she should be the same colour as Evie is now. The same colour that she had made Evie.   
Her mouth opens and words she didn't know she knew spilled from bloody lips.   
"Cad a thugann tú, beidh tú ag mothú." She spits, and the Queen pales when Mal pulls the strand of cobalt blue hair from her leather bracelet, the strand a direct connection to Evie and tying the spell to her mother.   
Evil Queen paled further as she contorted forward, clutching at her stomach and howling in pain.   
"This is what you did to Evie, and it is what you will never do again." She hisses, and she watches with so much sick pleasure as the Queen screams and yells about the pain.   
Good, this is what she did to Evie. She watches bruises form on the woman's wrists and she grins, tasting blood.   
"Enough." Her mother tells her, and Mal sneers at the woman, and for the first time she sees a tiny bit of fear from her mother, not knowing that her eyes flashed blue for the slightest second and in that second, looked so much like her father.   
The child knelt before the sobbing woman, and she whispered in her ear sweetly.  
"Evie is mine. As are Carlos and Jay. They are my gang and my family and they will not be harmed. Make sure that it is known. Any harm you give to Evie, you will feel yourself from now on. She might die from you starving her, and I hope every second of it hurts you like it is hurting her."   
The woman is shaking and nodding, begging it to stop.   
The magic flares down all at once, and Mal almost collapses to the ground. She is caught by Maleficent, and she flinched away as a hand cups her cheek.   
"There is evil in you after all. It seems that Evie and those boys allow you to bring it out. You are allowed to stay friends with them. You are powerful, Mal. And with my training, you will take over the world for me." The words are meant to be praise but make her feel ill, and she is exhausted.   
"Evie." She says, almost begging, and her mother smiles. It is a nasty thing, full of manipulation.  
"Go on. Go to the people who motivate you." It is the closest thing to an approval that Maleficent has ever given her friends, and Mal seizes is with both hands and leaves. She hears her mother cackling at the expense of the Evil Queen on her floor and she hopes fiercely that Evie is still alive.   
She hurries, and people still move out of her way even though her eyes no longer glow and her teeth no longer resemble razor blades in their sharpness.  
A few more packages are given; a package of tea that apparently Evie is partial to, some matches, a package of cookies that aren't rotten and some raspberries that aren't yet rotten either. These things are like gold on the Isle and Mal appreciates how much Evie is loved or at least liked by most people.   
Her exhausted small frame reaches the tree house, arms full of packages, and she is met by Jay who carries her up to the treehouse like he had Evie, and Mal is too exhausted to protest.   
Evie is still pale, and Mal falls to her knees beside her and prays to the goddess that Evie talks about that she will recover, and she tries with everything she has to summon her own magic again, to heal her friend.   
Nothing worse, and the attempts to wake Evie are failing. She is still frozen even with all the fabric they could get their hands on covering her, and Jay decides to crawl in beside her. The boy runs hot and he is their best chance to warm the girl.  
Carlos curls up like a puppy upon Evie's legs, too light to hurt her and trying to press his body heat into her.   
Mal kneels for hours after they drift off with their small friend in their arms, unable to even concieve of sleep when the idea that Evie might die. She kneels to the side and she prays to everything she can think of.   
She prays to her father, not even sure of who or what he is, but she is exhausted and delirious and her mind screams out for a parent.  
And her mother surely isn't that.  
Powder blue sparks flutter the air, and Mal is gaping because she isnt doing this.  
"You called for me?" Someone is behind her, and Mal aims a knife she stole at them, before gaping because that was Hades.  
"What?" Is all she manages, and he gives an amused sneer.  
"You prayed for your dad. Here I am." He states, and she thinks it through. Maleficent and Hades. It sort of makes sense. They're both insane, powerhungry and apparently neglectful parents.   
Mal is half fae, half god. Isn't that confusing.   
Never mind that, she has something more important.  
"Help me save her." She asks, and he casts his gaze over to Evie and the boys sleeping beside her to try and warm her up.  
"She's almost gone." He says, and Mal feels her heart seize up with terror. She can't lose Evie, she can't.  
"Save her. Please, save her. You never have to act like my dad, not that you ever had. Just please, please don't make me lose her." She is actively begging and knows her mother would beat her senseless for this weakness but she has no other choice and every breath Evie takes is a wheeze that sounds much too weak.  
Hades - her father - looks at her and her eyes are brimming with tears and she's sure she looks pathetic.   
But he softens, and he moves to press a hand against Evie's head. It pulses a dull blue, and he looks visibly weaker with every second he spends touching Evie.   
But Evie is turning back to the tan colour she's meant to be, and her breathing is easier.   
Hades looks at her, and she opens her mouth to thank him, but is cut off.  
"Don't call for me again." He tells her, and then he leaves.   
Something in her hurts at that, but then Evie groaned and her eyes fluttered, and Mal decides she couldn't give less of a toss about her father and whether or not he loves her when she has Evie, Jay and Carlos. 

Evie wakes up, and they feed her slowly. They don't leave the attic for days, and no one sends for them, which is odd and blissful and will not last.  
Evie has flushed cheeks and enjoys the food they bring her, and the Queen is eager to give it to them because the ache in her bones and in her stomach makes her wail and she has to feel everything painful Evie does, so it is fun for them to take more than needed from the horrible woman and hoard some food in the attic for whichever of them needs it next.   
Mal takes a breath and gets her friends attention, and they watch her carefully.  
"Hello," she says, and they are confused. "My name is Aurora."  
They freeze. Mal was telling them her real name. Fae didn't do that, there was too much power held in their names.   
Mal looked away as none of them spoke, afraid they would use it to hurt her like her mother did.  
"I'm Jadiel." Jay said softly, and the fae gave a sigh of relief when she wasn't condemned for her trust.   
"Cathal." The white haired boy chirped up from where he was still curled at Evie's feet like the dogs he was so afraid of.   
"Venus. She named me after one of her mother's gods. Venus was the goddess of beauty and I was meant to be beautiful." Evie told them sadly, and the friends hushed her sadness. They promised that the spell Mal used would hold and then woman would never hurt her again. That she would never be hit or starved again, and the girl was slowly believing it.  
Jay (or should they call him Jadiel now?) started chuckling, and they started.  
"What?" Carlos (Cathal) asked, and the taller boy wheezed.  
"Your mother named you after sleeping beauty, what the hell." He laughed, and soon the others laughed too.  
That day, they were family, and they would never be torn apart. Afterwards, their parents would punish them for being a way for so long, but Evil Queen had passed the message to Jafar and Cruella that the boys weren't to be touched.  
Yes they were still abused verbally and emotionally, and neglected, but they weren't beaten or starved, and that made all the difference.   
Evie had found herself a coven, and she intended to have it forever.


End file.
